How is Search Engine Marketing different from Search Engine Optimization?

In Search Engine Marketing (SEM) we pay Google or other search engines for displaying ads. It can be on per impression or per click basis. SEM is excellent for getting traffic to your site. They usually have a higher conversion rate than SEO. SEM involves a lot of detailed analysis on campaign performance and improvement. SEM gives you immediate short term results.

However once the campaign is halted, the advertisements ceases to display and traffic from that campaign will stop.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the work done both on your website (on page) as well as off it (off page), to rank higher in organic results of search engines.

Search engines have 2 distinct results for searches, one organic and the other paid advertisements. SEO targets the former while SEM targets the latter.

Which is better – SEO or SEM?

It is difficult to compare like this. Both gives tremendous benefits and are extremely important to get potential business and leads.

If we are to compare, we need to look at a lot of factors such as time frame, budget and objective.